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Dionysos's Revenge and the Validation of the Hellenic World-View

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Park McGinty
Park McGinty
Affiliation:
Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA 18015
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Extract

Stories of mortals offending the gods and being punished for their impudence occupy a prominent position in Greek religious tradition. Almost all of the major deities receive some affront, and the manner in which they avenge themselves is a significant, though usually minor, component in defining their nature. In the case of Dionysos, however, the pattern of affront and vengeance occurs too often to be a mere episode in the god's history and instead forms one of the central mythical features by which he is characterized.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 71 , Issue 1-2 , April 1978 , pp. 77 - 94
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1978

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References

1 Lycurgus: Homer Iliad 6.130–40; Sophocles Antigone 955–67 and later accounts. Also in the Perseus accounts: Pausanias 2.20. 4; 22.1; 23.7–8, Norinus Dionysiaka 25–47, and the Deriades account: Nonnus Dionysiaka 21–40.

2 Lycurgus in the fragments of Aeschylus and Naevius. For Aesch. see Nauck, A., Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta 2 (Leipzig: Teubner, 1926Google Scholar) frgs. 58–62; H. J. Mette, Die Fragmente der Tragödien des Aischylos (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1959) frgs. 72–76. For Naevius see n. 41 below. Also Pentheus in Euripides Bacchae 433ff. and later accounts.

3 The Tyrrhenian pirates: Homeric Hymn 6, and later accounts.

4 Boutes: Diodorus 5.50.

5 Pentheus. The daughters of Proitos: Hesiod Eoiae, in R. Merkelbach and M. L. West, Fragmenta Hesiodea (Oxford: Clarendon, 1967) frg. 131 (=Apollodorus2.[26]2.2). Also the daughters of Minyas: Ovid Metamorphoses 4.1ff.; Plutarch Quaest. Graec. 38; Antoninus Liberalis Metamorphoses 10; Aelian Varia Historia 3.42. Also Orpheus: Aeschylus (=Nauck, Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta 2 frg. 22);

6 The daughters of Eleuther: Suidas, s.v. μελαναιγιδα Διóνυσoν.

7 The murderers of Ikarios: Hyginus Fabulae 130; Nonnus Dionysiaka 47.34–225.

8 The only exception is that of Perseus, who, because he was acting as the protégé of Hera, does not represent a mortal insulting a god of his own initiative. In Schol. T on Il. 14.319: (in H. Erbse, Scholia Graeca in Homeri Ilidem vol. 3[Berlin: de Gruyter, 1974] 641), Eustathius 989.23: Perseus throws Dionysos into the Lernean lake. Dionysos fares better in other accounts of this episode. In Pausanias (2.20.4; 22.1; 23.7–8) after the conflict Dionysos wins the worship of the Argives; in Nonnus (Dionysiaka 25.47) Dionysos relents from killing Perseus only at the behest of Hermes.

9 Lycurgus: Sophocles Antigone 955–65.

10 Hyginus Fabulae 730: the daughters of the Attic shepherds who had murdered Ikarios suffer from a pestilence until they memorialize Erigone, Ikarios's daughter who had killed herself out of grief.

11 Generally the madness is followed by disaster. In the daughters of Eleuther episode (n. 6, above), however, the madness is cured without lasting effects once Dionysos is honored properly.

12 Lycurgus blinded by Zeus: Nonnus Dionysiaka 21.

13 Lycurgus: Homer Il. 6.130–40; Deriades: Nonnus Dionysiaka 21–40.

14 Orpheus dismembered alive by the Bassarides: Aeschylus (=Nauck, Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta 2, frg. 22); Lycurgus torn apart by horses: Apollodorus 3.5.1.

15 Boutes: Diodorus 5.50.1–5; Lycurgus: Hyginus Fabulae 132.

16 The women of Argos devour their own nurslings after the impiety of the daughters of Proitos: see n. 5. The Minyades kill one of their children: seen. 5. Lycurgus is portrayed in late accounts as killing his wife, or child, or both: Apollodorus 3.5.1; Hyginus Fabulae 132.

17 Much of the horror ofthe Bacchae results from the double madness Dionysos imposes in order to have Pentheus destroyed by his own mother. This scenario remains stable in later accounts.

18 The Tyrrhenian pirates into dolphins: Homeric Hymn 6 and later accounts. The Minyades into flying animals: see n. 5.

19 Lycurgus must continually fill a leaking vessel: fragment from anon. pap. in D. L., Page, Select Papyri, vol. 3 (London: Heinemann, 1962) 520–25Google Scholar.

20 I discus s older interpretations of Dionysiac mythology in general, relating these readings to underlying hermeneutical presuppositions in my Interpretation and Dionysos. Method in the Study of a God (The Hague: Mouton, 1978Google Scholar).

21 The basic references for this approach are Berger, Peter and Luckmann, Thomas, The Social Construction of Reality (Garden City, N.J.: Doubleday, 1966Google Scholar), and Berger, Peter, The Sacred Canopy (Garden City, N.J.: Doubleday, 1969Google Scholar). Much recent anthropology has moved in the same direction. Cf. esp. the work of Clifford Geertz, Mary Douglas, and Victor Turner. While the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss has applications to showing how essential categories organize the “shape” of social worlds, from the present perspective it is too formalistic to elucidate the way the myths are linked to social, political, and economic realities. While the argument of the present paper could be described as showing how the vengeance myths mediate certain contradictions within Greek society, both the contradictions and the mediations are historically bound to a specific system of social relationships and hence do not represent any inherent property of the human mind. The appreciative critique of Lévi-Strauss by Kirk (Myth [Berkeley: University of California, 1973] 42–83) is helpful, especially in his suggested modifications of the structuralist method (pp. 73–77). Kirk's insistence on the fortuitous nature of much mythical material is doubtlessly correct, but it should be supplemented by awareness of the politics involved in creating and transmitting mythology. Myths after all were told to and for specific constituencies who had ways of making their approval and disapproval felt.

22 The word “ideology” is used here in a value-free sense to refer to structured ideas which function both to define a world (to serve as a map or model of reality) and to orient people's behavior in that world (to serve as a blueprint or model for reality). While often restricted to thought systems which serve specific interest groups, “ideology” is here used in the broader sense because it is the only term which implies both an organized set of ideas and a dynamic process through which these ideas become the “real world” of a person appropriating them. “Worldview,” although helpful, connotes too much passivity; while “propaganda,” although including the dynamic aspect involved in “world-appropriation,” is too pejorative.

23 The Social Construction of Reality.

24 For references to this topos, see the following: A. P. Burnett, “Pentheus and Dionysos: Host and Guest,” Classical Philology 65 (1970) 24–25, nn. 8–9; G. Procacci, “Interno a un Episodo del Poema di Silio Italico (7.162–211),” Rivista Phitologia 42(1914) 441–48, esp. 442, n. 1; J. Fontenrose, Philemon, Lot and Lycaon (University of California Publications in Classical Philology 13; Berkeley, 1945) 93–120, esp. 94–102, and nn. 15–16. Burnett, 15, n. 1, makes the relevant observation that the theme of divine punishment is central to several tragedies (Aeschylus: Persae, Prometheus, Agamemnon; Sophocles: Ajax, Trach iniae, Oedipus Tyrannus; Euripides: Hippolytus, Bacchae) and important in others (Euripides: Hercules Furens, Andromache). Furthermore, the notion that gods will, as a matter of course, punish those slighting their τιμή is perfectly congruent with Hellenic ideas; Dodds cites, in addition to Dionysos's demands for honor (Bacchae 208–9,319–21), that of Aphrodite: Euripides Hippolytus 7–8, and that of Thanatos: Euripides AIcestis 53. Finally, for recent analysis integrating Dionysos's destruction of Pentheus into the general phenomenon of Greek gods destroying mortals, see Roux, Jeanne, Euripide: Les Bacchantes (Paris: “Les Belles Lettres,” 1970Google Scholar) 34–42.

25 Pindar Olympian Odes 2.25–27; Euripides Baccae 1–3; Ovid Metamorphoses 3.259–315.

26 Ikarios: see n. 7 above; Brongos: Nonnus Dionysiaka 17.37–86; Falernus: Silius Italicus Punica 7.162–211; Oeneus: Hyginus Fabulae 129; the inhabitants of Naxos (who allowed Dionysos to have Ariadne): Seneca Oedipus 488–96; cf. Propertius 3.17.27–28; and the Egyptians: Diodorus 3.73.5–6.

27 The helmsman of the Tyrsenian or Tyrrhenian pirates: Homeric Hymn 6; Ovid Metamorphoses 3.582–691; Kutis, the wife of Lycurgus who urges him not to resist: Anon, pap., (ed. Page, n. 19 above); Charops, the Thracian who informs Dionysos of Lycurgus's evil intentions: Diodorus 3.65.5–6, and Cadmus and Teiresias: Euripides Bacchae 170–369.

28 Ikarios, Brongos, Falernus all get wine; the helmsman in the Homeric hymn is made “entirely blessed,” πανόλβιoν; Charops gets Lycurgus's Thracian kingdom and knowledge of the initiatory rites.

29 Kutis, Lycurgus's wife, is saved from destruction; so too the Tyrrhenian helmsman.

30 After the tragic deaths of Ikarios and Erigone, Erigone is memorialized in the Aiora festival (Hyginus Fabulae 130) and / or she and her father, along with their faithful dog, are translated into constellations: Nonnus Dionysiaka 21–40.

31 Cadmos and his wife, though having to suffer many hardships, are eventually to be brought ot the Land of the Blessed: Euripides Bacchae 1330–39.

32 Cf. Jacqueline de Romilly, “Le théme du bonheur dans les Bacchantes,” Revue des Etudes grecques 76 (1963) 361–80; R. P. Festugiére, “La signification religieuse de la parodos des Bacchantes,” Eranos 54 (1956) 72–86.

33 Il. 6.139.

34 As Guthri e does ingeniously in The Greeks and their Gods (Boston: Beacon, 1955) 165.

35 He has “nurses” (τιθῆναι); and when he dives into the sea, Thetis, in maternal fashion, takes him to her breast (Θέτις δ' ὑπεδέξατo κóλπῳ δειδιóτα). In Nonnus (20.4), even as a mature god Dionysos flees, but only after Hera tricks him int o taking off his armor and frightening him with thunder.

36 Il. 6.140.

37 Nauck, Tragicorum GrOecorum Fragmenta, 2 frgs. 60–62; Mette, Die Fragmente der Tragödien des Aischylos, frgs. 72–74. For discussion see Mette, Der verlorene Aischylos (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1963) 136–41; Louis Séchan, Etudes sur la tragédie dans ses rapports avec la céramique (Paris: Champion, 1926) 63–79.

38 ἐνθoυσι δὴ δ μα, βακχεύει στέγη (Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenla, 2 frg. 58; Die Fragmente der Tragödien des Aischylos, frg. 76).

39 For review discussion of general scholarly positions see the following: for pre-1912 interpretations, Rene Nihard, Le Problème des Bacchantes d'Euripide (Louvain: Ch. Peters, 1912) 9–14; for more recent materials, E. R. Dodds, Euripides' Bacchae, 2 pp. xxxix-1; Jean Carrière, “Sur le message des Bacchantes,” L'Antiquilé classique 35 (1966) 119, n. 7.

40 Cf. Burnett, 21. Also see Festugière (80–81) for a discussion of the contrast between εὶδώς, “he who knows,” and ἀμαθής, “the uninstructed,” as used in the Bacchae.

41 The third century B.C. Roman tragedy Lycurgus by Naevius seems clearly to reproduce the general structure of Aeschylus's Edonoi and centers on divine punishment of hybris. (See E. H. Warmington, Remains of Old Latin [4 vols.; London: Heinemann, 1936] 2.122–35). By the time of Roman ascendency the myths were so common that they no longer needed full telling but could function as a literary topos. Authors could simply list key names and artists paint key figures of those punished (Horace Carmina 2. 19.14–16; Diodorus 3.65.4; 4.4; Ovid Tristia 5.3.39–40) or those blessed (Philostratus Imagines 1.25) or groups containing both (Pausanias 1.20.3; Propertius 3.17.21–28; Longos Daphnis and Chloe 4.3; Seneca Oedipus 435–96) and these figures could function as shorthand slogans to evoke images of divine power and to warn against impiety. Finally, Nonnus collects almost all of the vengeance myths and supplies his own supplements, in general changing the myths only to heighten the power of Dionysos.

42 That gods could force mortals into opposing other gods does not, of course, argue against the fact that mortal s were not to initiate such opposition on their own.

43 Cf. Berger (The Sacred Canopy, 54–80, esp. 73–78) for discussion relating theodicy to man's choice for the divine “other” and against himself.

44 Plutarch Quaest. Graec. 38.

45 Ecstatic Religion: An Anthropological Study of Spirit Possession and Shamanism (Baltimore: Penguin, 1971).

46 Ecstatic Religion, 101. The assertion that Dionysos was a god primarily of the lower classes is difficult, if not impossible, to verify or refute. G. Aurelio Privitera (Dioniso in Omero e nella poesia greca arcaica. [Rome: Edizioni dell'Ateneo, 1970] 21–27, passim) presents suggestive evidence that Dionysos was both known by the Mycenaen aristocracy and venerated by the nobility of the archaic and classical periods. Dionysiac religion is, however, complex; and the socially powerful could have worshipped Dionysos as god of wine and drama without associating themselves with the orgiastic cult which, after all, is the catalyst for the violence in the resistance-vengeance myths. The central issue is actually whether it was primarily the socially marginal who were the carriers of the ecstatic cult. Surviving evidence suggests that indeed it was the “relatively deprived” members of society, especially women, who were most attracted to the ecstatic cult. (References to women and the orgia are assembled in Farnell, Cults, 5.297–99). Relative deprivation, as recent discussions (cf. David Aberle, “A Note on Relative Deprivation Theory as Applied to Millenarian and Other Cult Movements”in W. A. Lessa and E. Z. Vogt, eds., Reader in Comparative Religion 2 [New York: Harper & Row, 1965] 537–41; John Gager, Kingdom and Community [Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1975] 27–28, 94–96) make clear, is not a static, objective category but rather refers to a discrepancy between what a person or group sees as legitimate expectations on the one hand and actuality on the other. This discrepancy between what is hoped for and what is attainable could then be sufficient to lead even prominent but frustrated figures to participate in the orgia. Given that Greek historians concerned themselves with the powerful, it is not surprising that the only historical devotees of the ecstasy whose social background we know (Olympias, mother of Alexander, and Skylas, a Scythian king) were powerful figures. What is striking, however, is the fact that both were barred from playing fully the role he or she desired. Herodotus (4.78–80) explicitly states that Skylas, even though king, was dissatisfied with Scythian culture and preferred disguising himself as an ordinary Greek and participating in Greek customs to being a Scythian. The rest of the Scythian leadership found their King's participation in the Dionysiac orgia shameful and brought about his death. Olympias, for her part, though close to the pinnacle of Macedonian leadership, was constantly thwarted from the level of power she so clearly craved. The royal women of Macedonia, no matter how talented, occupied (and, more important for the present discussion, could expect to occupy) positions ofsubservience relative to the men surrounding them, a fact emphasized by Alexander's alleged remark (Plutarch Alexander 68) that his mother's assuming command in Epirus was a wise choice since the Macedonians would never submit to having a woman as king. (On the disparity between the abilities of and the opportunities for Macedonian queens, see G. H. Macurdy, Hellenistic Queens [Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1932] esp. 1–17.) Thus, according to the interpretation offered here, both Skylas and Olympias, though powerful in one sense, were, in another sense, powerless to fulfill their most basic aspirations and hence sought compensatory satisfactions in the Dionysiac ecstasy. Similarly in the Bacchae (11.185–90) Cadmus and Teiresias, the only male devotees of Dionysos, are both essentially powerless, and explicitly contrast thejoys of the Dionysian ecstasy to the burden of old age. Once one notes that the devotees of the ecstatic cult tend to be those who are blocked from the full exercise of their powers, it is possible to abandon the traditional but fatuous sexist interpretations that see women as by nature more prone than men to the Bacchic orgia.

47 De Romilly, p. 365.

48 Whatever the actual historical relationship between Dionysos and the ruling class, in the myths the number of kings, rulers, and apparently “established ” matrons resisting the ecstatic cult is striking.

49 The first section of Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy still represents one of the most effective evocations of the suspension of social barriers produced by the Dionysian ecstasy.

In light of the powerful appeal of the later Dionysiac cult as a salvation religion, it is not unreasonable to speculate that the Bacchic ecstasy may have served, from a very early period, as a catalyst for inchoate eschatological longings for a society both egalitarian and joyful.

50 The interpretation offered here, while agreeing with the folk-historical school that tensions which might have led to a resistance to Dionysos may have been present, finds no need to postulate an actual opposition and sees the myths as a defense against, rather than a memory of, such a situation.

51 I wish to thank Professor C. Robert Phillips (Department of Classics, Lehigh University) for criticisms of this paper.